Northwestern’s debate team has already proven itself against the best in the country. Having recently won its 11th national debate championship, NU ranks first in number of national debate titles won.

But Wednesday, NU went beyond the country’s borders, taking on Cambridge University in the third installment of the annual Cambridge Debate at Norris University Center.

Unlike the national tournament, though, this debate had no clear winner.

The teams debated the resolved: “This house believes that the United States should be a global philanthropist rather than a policemen,” for about an hour and a half before about 100 people.

The Cambridge team included 2001 Glasgow World Championship World Finalist Caoilfhionn Gallagher. On its side, NU fielded Jonathan Paul, a member of this year’s national champion squad, as well as Raja Gaddipati, LaTonya Starks and Geoff Garen.

Unlike most domestic debate tournaments, Wednesday’s debates took place in British Parliamentary style, which encourages audience interaction by allowing viewers to ask the debators questions. The different format, however, did not daunt NU’s debators.

“We’re pretty confident,” Paul said. “But any time we have these debates the crowd votes for (Cambridge) because the audience thinks that they’re funny. But we usually outdebate them on the substantive issues.”

Cambridge team rebuttalist Gallagher said the key to the British Parliamentary style was to capture the audience’s attention, however, something pure recitation of the facts could not do.

“The idea of the British debate is to persuade the audience,” Gallagher said. “But if they’re saying that we employ just 7-8 minutes of pure humor, that isn’t true.”

As it turned out, humor engendered the greatest response and interaction from the audience.

At one point Cambridge debator Caleb Ward called President Bush, “a man so stupid, he couldn’t pass his blood test,” arguing that Bush’s policy of allocating $48 billion for military improvement “just doesn’t work or make sense.”

NU’s Garen retaliated by poking fun at U.K.’s rather generous drinking habits.

“In the U.S. the drinking age is 21 years while in England it is 21 months,” he said.

Aside from comic relief, both Cambridge and NU presented the audience with substantial arguments. Cambridge’s position was the affirmative, that the United States should act as a global philanthropist rather than a policeman. They argued that instead of resorting to military invasion, the U.S. should rely on debt relief to improve the condition of undeveloped nations.

In addition, they stressed an initiative in which the U.S. places money into trust funds for impoverished nations, but also ensuring that the money will not fall into the wrong hands.

Cambridge gave the example of U.S. military action’s failure in Africa to support their argument that military action was not the path toward improving the economic condition of undeveloped countries.

NU debators argued that Cambridge’s proposition for debt relief would actually cause more problems than it would solve.

Paul argued that if debt relief were given to undeveloped nations, the nations would develop a false sense of financial security and would not establish their own powerful economic infrastructure.

Additionally, the NU team drew on the examples of U.S. military invasion of Kosovo and the Persian Gulf to prove their point that military action was necessary, in addition to philanthropic acts, for improving the global condition.

Cambridge rebuttalist Tim Saunders said he was disappointed that the two teams were not always on the same page as to how to conduct the debate.

“I think you saw the difference between American and U.K. debates quite clearly … sadly, we clashed in the styles, not the debates.”

Gallagher expressed similar frustration in her final rebuttal, when she told the NU squad, “You are as confused with the Parliamentary debate as Adam and Eve are on Mother’s day.”

But the audience didn’t share Gallagher’s frustration enough to declare Cambridge the winners.

In Parliamentary style the audience declares the winner by saying either “aye” or “nay,” agreeing or disagreeing to the the resolved as it is called out by the moderator. However, the number of audible aye’s and nay’s was indistinguishable, and the debate was determined a tie by moderator and political science Prof. Edward Gibson.

While the two teams presented strong arguments, some audience members felt that with all the cracks and humor, they were led astray.

“Both teams digressed a lot,” said Akbar Naqvi, a Weinberg freshman.